


the woods are silent dark and deep

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 08:37:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2686322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>and i have promises to keep, and miles to go before i sleep</p>
            </blockquote>





	the woods are silent dark and deep

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: _But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul, to the man-animals. He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and his memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away._ \- Jack London. The story of Westeros as known to date retold through the eyes of Grey Wind, Lady, Nymeria, Summer, Shaggy Dog and Ghost.

i. mother

these woods are warmer.  these woods are darker as well, darker for it is still the long days and in the long days.  the scent of snow is in the heavy air, and pine.

she hears the crackling of the woods, trees that sway in the wind and creak when left alone.  she hears the babble of a nearby stream and stops to drink, for she is tired.  she is heavy. she is many things, and has been many places and as far down as she can go, she will because though the days are darker the further down you go, when the short days come and the long nights come, better to be down than up when daylight may never hit you.

her pups wriggle inside her and she knows they will come soon.  she should find a corner to rest in, to release them in, but she is not done going down yet. she has many further days to go before she will be far enough away.  so on she presses, on she goes.  she is bigger than her smaller cousins here.  she is stronger and faster, even with the pups within. perhaps the cousins will be her new pack when the pups run at her feet.  perhaps they will keep her warm when the night days come.

she pauses at the river.  she dips her snout to the water and drinks, cool, clear water, water from the earth not water from snow melt.  it tastes different.

then she stops because she smells it. a stag.  nourishment.  strength for the birth.  

and she stalks.

ii. lady

the man-pack is fighting.  she hears raised voices, and knows it. it took her a long while to know that when the man-pack gets loud it is in anger.  it is not a howl of loneliness, not the search for companionship. it is more a growl, even if it sounds not like a growl.

when it sounds like they growl it is a happy sound, a sound of family, of pack, of warmth of play. this she has learned. this she must continue to learn. learning the ways of the man-pack is for the better, for if she knows their ways she will be able to protect the little she-man. 

most things are grey in her eyes—grey and white and black, but sometimes she thinks she sees another color in the she-man’s hair. she likes it.  it makes her different from the white and black and grey, and she can always find her. 

the she-man calls her lady.  she calls many others lady as well—lady this and lady that and lady someone else, but to the she-man, she is just lady. it speaks well of these other ladies that the she-man calls her by lady’s name.

she hears more of the man-fighting. she hears more loud voices. she hears her she-man crying and she would go to her but they have put the iron ring around her neck so she sits still, the way that her she-man does when she waits for instruction. her she-man has raised her well. she will be good until she is called upon.  and then—whoever made the she-man cry, that one will be the first to taste her teeth.

she waits and waits and the she-man’s father comes out. he kneels beside her, and she whimpers at him, hoping he will tell her the she-man has stopped her crying. he strokes her head, the soft fur behind her ears, and then she feels something cold at her throat.

 iii. shaggydog

the littleman is angry and so he is angry. the littleman is scared too, but shaggydog is not scared.  shaggydog does not let himself be scared.  not when the littleman is scared.  if he is not scared, then the littleman forgets his fear and when he forgets his fear he is brave and strong. 

shaggydog would like it better if the littleman weren’t so small.  when shaggydog was small, the littleman was also small, but the littleman has not grown as shaggydog has, and shaggydog is now bigger than the littleman. 

it is dark down here.  dark and closed and if it were not for the littleman, shaggy would be howling and growling angrily.  but it is for the littleman that he stays quiet, because the littleman tells him he must be quiet so he does.  the littleman’s biggerbrother sits with his own brother.  the biggerbrother is always sitting. the biggerbrother does not run anymore. the biggerbrother fell, and the man-pack protects him now.  the littleman would hurt anyone who hurt the biggerbrother, and so would shaggydog. the biggerbrother makes the littleman feel safe, and holds him when he is scared but does not want to hold shaggydog.

there are others here too, down in the dark, waiting. the wood smelling woman, and the horse smelling man and the two who smell of wet earth.  they whisper in the dark, and shaggydog listens sometimes, but more often he sits and waits with his own brother. they will not be down here forever. and when they rise they will run far and fast and rip the throats out of those who scare the littleman.

he hopes they will not wait long.  he longs to run.

iv. grey wind

the alpha will not bring him into the castle. he will not bring him into the castle.  he had been smarter than that, hadn’t he?  how can he not smell it?  how can he not smell them?  does he not notice the sound of clinking rings beneath their second skins? 

the alpha has kept him apart since he began to mate with his chosen.  his chosen is afraid of grey wind.  she has nothing to be afraid of.  he will not harm his pack.  but she is unused to pack—true pack, wolf-pack—and so the alpha keeps him away. her man-pack also smells of fear. a different fear. grey wind does not like it. he does not like it when men smell of fear. 

the men of the castle smell of fear. they smell of fear and eagerness—a worse combination, and how can the alpha not smell it? he has a bad nose, but surely it is not so bad as this?  surely this fear and anticipation he can smell where he cannot smell his mother’s sadness or the pale-eyed-man’s bitterness?  surely he can smell it?  but if he cannot smell it, then why does he keep grey wind away when grey wind tries to warn him, offers his nose instead.

he hears it in the distance.  the beating of drums and the familiar clash of steel and he howls a long howl, begging the alpha to let him out, to let him fight as well.

but the alpha does not let him out. the alpha comes inside instead, and his heart beats fast because the alpha’s heart has stopped and so it must beat for both of them.

there are men outside the enclosure with drawn claws and cold eyes.

v. ghost

the man-pack makes the beta their alpha and everything is different. he sees his man going to and from their stone and wood dens, and ghost tries to follow but is not always allowed. so he waits, and sniffs at the air, and watches as the man-pack moves about.

the nights grow longer and it is near as cold as when he and his man went beyond the great ice thing.  the cold makes his nose numb.  he does not like it.  he can smell less well with his nose numb, and while he waits outside for his man to come out again, sometimes he misses the scents he would have gotten when he was a pup and the days were longer. 

he misses his pack.  not the man-pack.  he likes this man-pack well enough, though sometimes they look at him oddly.  he misses his wolf-pack, brothers and sisters who he howled with—or rather who he pretended to howl with, and who did not care that he could not sing with them.  it is lonely here, sometimes.  there are not even the smaller cousins here, the way there were beyond the big ice thing.  but there is his man and that, at least, is good.  his man who has his man-pack which has made him their alpha.

and yet now that he is alpha they seem to like him less.  there is less play and more seriousness, but perhaps that is simply the way of men.  he remembers his man’s little brothers and little sister playing in the snow. his man never played with them. his man was older. perhaps older men do not play as their young do. 

play is important.  he misses playing.  he is sure his man does too.  play is what builds a pack, but he cannot command his man to force his man-pack to play together. they should play as the little manlings did once in the snow.  he should join them.  sometimes he thinks he catches a whiff of anger from them when they stare at his man. his man should be wary of that, be aware of—

it comes so startling that he’d yelp if he had a voice.  icy coldness.  in his stomach.  in his heart.  in his mind. and there is his man, awake but asleep, aching and cold in the corner of his mind and ghost does not know why, but he does know that he must run, so he does.

vi. summer 

once he’d been prince of the forest as his manling had been prince of the great stone gathering that had always been warm.  once he’d hunted and dined upon the flesh of deer, stalking them in the day and night.  once he’d run—run faster than even the horses that men used to carry themselves from place to place.  but now, he does not.  now he sits. now he waits.

he has been under earth before, when he and his manling and their brothers had hidden in the deepest black home of the dead.  but then, he’d known that they’d come out. now he is less certain.

the manling is learning to walk in skins.  it has been easy for summer to feel the warmth of the manling’s mind in his own, a friend, a brother, a oneness.  but now he sees the way the manling sits by the mantree, the way he closes his eyes and becomes one with the squawking birds, the way he sinks into the skin of the large man and walks about.  he sees the way his manling leaves the mind of the living behind and sinks into the trees, and when he wakes, his eyes are blurry and confused with thoughts he does not understand.

how long will they stay down there?  he misses the air on his face, the scent of snow and pine and sap, the howls of his cousins, the playful yelps of his pack.  how long will they remain? how long will his manling look to the trees when he should be looking for his pack, for his angry brother and his sister who howls in a land of water?  if they stay here for much longer, they will forget what freedom tastes of, and they will waste away, like the mantree, until they are no more than the bones like the dead sister.

summer does not like it.  summer would return to his days as a pup if he could.

vii. nymeria

she wakes up feeling empty, like something has left her and she cannot find it.

it is not a new feeling.  she has felt it for months now, since she began dreaming she was her she-man again. her she-man is bigger. her hair is shorter. her scent is sadder. and when she sleeps, she is far away, across the big salty water in the heart of her she-man.

her she-man comes into her sometimes too.  it snows now in this land of rivers, and her pack is hungry, and her she-man beats in her heart as she runs.  the last time that she saw snow, she was a pup and she was rolling in the yard with her brothers and sister while the she-man said goodbye to her mother and brothers.  snow is a happy thing.  it tastes of her she-man and the warm stones where they lived together once.

she wants to go back, but she doesn’t know the way.

she wants to go back, but she doesn’t know if she’s welcome. the she-man and another threw rocks at her once, telling her to go.  and though she feels the she-man’s warmth in her sometimes, she does not know if she is allowed near her anymore. 

it is a lonely thing to be thrown away from her she-man—a lonely thing to be thrown away from her self.  for she is that little she-man.  she knows she takes her bravery from her.  how easy it was for her to bring others to her pack, playing sticks with her boy and always speaking with the men of her father’s pack. how scary it had been to be alone, how scary to be young and unwanted and surrounded by cousins who would one day be smaller than her but were larger than her now.  but she was her she-man’s wolf, and her she-man made friends with everyone.  she could too. 

and she did.  she made her pack, brought her cousins around her because no man-pack could stop them if they are all together.  and as the nights grow longer, her pack grows bigger, and as her pack grows bigger she feels less alone.  and yet, on nights when she dreams she is a little blind girl across the sea, she feels empty when she wakes, and she misses her she-man.

 


End file.
